Simulacra Simulation Jean Baudrillard. Definitions. Definitions. The Desert of the Real. The Eras of Simulacra Simulation

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1 Simulacra Simulation Jean Baudrillard The simulacrum is never what hides the truth it is the true that hides the fact that there is none The simulacrum is true -Ecclesiastes November, 2007 Definitions The Real What exists before simulation and simulacra are constructed. The origin The Hyperreal Reality s substitute based on a simulated world Vornado Denis Peterson (Hyperreal painter) Definitions Simulation A display of actions or process meant to deceive Dissimulation A display of actions or processes meant to conceal an existence Simulacrum The image of something that imitates a behavior or simulates For Baudrillard, it has the power of murdering its predecessor Site Simulacrum Photography by Michael Richard The Desert of the Real Simulation is the generation by models of the real without origin or reality - the hyperreal The Eras of Simulacra Simulation 1. Liquidation of all Referential 2. Everything is dead and resurrected in advance The era of murder by simulation The real persists here and there, in the remote regions of western existence The Transparent Simulacrum of the Feigned Image Salvador Dali

2 A Model Based Reality The Dichotomy of Simulation The real is reproducible, because there is no direct relationship between simulation and reality. The real has been destroyed The signs of the real, replace the real The models supplant reality Dissimulate: pretend not to have what one has (presence) Leaves reality intact Preserves reference Simulate: fake what one does have (absence) Destroys reality by blurring its boundaries Sick Child Scenario The dilemma of psychosomatics Distinguishing the real Examples Medicine: Psychiatry admits: Objective cause ceased to exist The Military system Hesitates to distinguish produced and authentic symptoms All crazy people simulate, and this lack of distinction is the worse kind of subversion Concepts in Art Philosophy Dissimulation Multitudes: If this stand-off exists in cunning dissimulation, between 'Art as Network' and the Ego re-enforcement through 'artist-as-networker' can there be nominated any evidence of a rigorous and affirmative politics of the aesthetic, both fully contemporary, 'modern' and fully 'democratic'? The Net-work (internet and intranets)... functions paradoxically as a 'dissimulation' [to hide, as knowledge, under a false appearance] of interaction and immediacy. A network is in potential a 'reflexive' mega structure, calling itself up from an infinite archival intelligence] (Redux January 2007) Concepts in Art Philosophy Dissimulation Commercial Art: Produces Dissimulation? Images to placate, mollify, and fulfill? Film? New Media Arts: Are New Media arts the most significant tools of the simulation world? Consider image cleanup in Photoshop Video game simulation Simulation exceeding reality (the allegory of the murderous post game child) Dissimulation in the Everyday Are these apt examples of dissimulation? Business Brand Management: Same contents, very different experience (Cola Wars, water et al.) Medicine Virtual cures: hide the symptoms and the disease disappears (e.g. cold and flue medications) 2

3 Simulation in the Everyday Emergency Drills: fire, attack, etc Consider Cold War America (1950 s drills) The terrorist threat Interactive Media Video game accomplishments The terrorist threat Business Corporate securities value derived from perception Brand Management (commercial arts) Distinguishing the Real: Religion The machinery and icons substituted for the pure and intelligible idea Iconoclast Predicted the Omnipotence of Simulacra God as a reflexive simulacrum Knowing of the simulacrum drives destruction of images The despair that the image didn t conceal anything at all Iconolaters Recognized a game Dissimulate the fact there is nothing behind the images Murderous Power of Images What if God himself can be simulated, reduced to signs of faith the system becomes a giant simulacrum Creates a recursive simulacrum Phases of Image It is the reflection of a profound reality It masks and denatures a profound reality It masks the absence of a profound reality It has no relation to any reality whatsoever It is its own pure simulation Rosy-Colored Resurrection Ethnology of the Contemporary Science is murderous In order for ethnology to live, its objects must die Ethnology... liberated from its object, [will] be applied to all living things and make itself invisible... That of the simulacrum We are all Tasaday Indians [Ethnology] is here, everywhere... In a world completely catalogued and analyzed Disneyland Play of illusion and phantasm An ethnographic display case, social microcosm, and miniaturized pleasure of America Gadgets magnetize the crowd from the solitude of the concentration camp parking Setup to rejuvenate the fiction of the real (neither true nor false) Stations that feed reality (Los Angeles) Places that embalm and pacify 3

4 Ethnology of the Contemporary Disneyland The regeneration of the imaginary, dreams, phantasms, historical The hyperreal civilization s prototype The result: People no longer look at each other, there are institutions for that They no longer touch each other but there is contactotherapy They no longer walk, but they go jogging Ethnology of the West Musuemification We require a visible path, a visible continuum, a visible myth of origin Musuemification is destructive history becomes prey to both science and worms We double taking what existed, destroy it in its discovery and move it into a preservation state From Jameson The Cultural Logic Presented of Late by Lindsay Capitalism Grace Global Ethnology Dubai: Creation of manufactured reefs Resurrections Americans flatter themselves for having brought the population of [Native Americans] back to pre- Conquest levels Everywhere we live in a world strangely similar to the origin things are doubled by their own scenario Even the dream is resurrected We simulate everyday life Watergate Effect of the imaginary concealing that realty no more exists outside than inside the limits of the artificial perimeter Formerly one worked to dissimulate scandal today one works to conceal that there is none Watergate is not a scandal...because it is what everyone is busy concealing Mobius We are in a logic simulation which no longer has anything to do with a logic of facts and order of reason All is true... There is an impossibility of a determined position of power Like a mobius strip too long to traverse Proving real through the imaginary, truth through scandal, the law through transgression, ethnology through dispossession 4

5 Mobius The proof of the theater through antitheater The proof of art through anti-art The proof of pedagogy through antipedagogy Proof of psychiatry through antipsychiatry The Strategy of the Real Illusion is no longer, possible because the real is no longer possible The network of artificial signs will become inextricably mixed up with real elements How to feign a violation? The Strategy of the Real Questions How does the growth of reality tv link to hyperreality and the destruction of the real Does you tube extend these notions? What experiences in your everyday illustrate his theory (e.g. Jogging) Are there institutions or places that combat these notions an anti-disneyland prototype? Questions Have you seen or know of any art that plays on the notion of dissimulating experience? How do these concepts effect authenticity? What about process? Have you tried to feign violation Other than the allowed institutions for feigning (e.g. a gallery space, a theater)? Questions Is Baudrillard a Situationist with a finer point? Can there be real dissimulation if the simulation is everything? Are dissimulations distracting from the simulations? Where are the deserts of the real? What s still there? 5

6 Producers of Simulacra? Wikipedia? Networked information fabricated from non-expert experts Is Wikipedia Hyperreal? Anything not television, managed by its image? References Re=purpose of Information: Art as Network, Joel Slayton: Redux Project: Multitudes: The Matrix Trailer 6